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Christian’s Hope by Ervin Stutzman released by Herald Press

Christian’s Hope by Ervin Stutzman released by Herald Press
Third novel completes Return to Northkill trilogy

HARRISONBURG, Va., and KITCHENER, Ontario—With Christian’s Hope, author Ervin Stutzman, also executive director of Mennonite Church USA, concludes his Return to Northkill trilogy. Published by Herald Press, this historical novel, set in the 18th century, is a based on a true story of warfare, nonviolence, and moral choice.

The first novel in the series, Jacob’s Choice, describes the historic French and Indian War massacre and aftermath in which an Amish father and two sons were kidnapped and their family killed. Joseph’s Dilemma looks at war and forgiveness through the eyes of a son adopted by his Native American captors. In Christian’s Hope, the second surviving son returns from captivity to find himself no longer at home in Amish culture and questioning his beliefs and identity.

Universal themes emerge in this story from centuries ago, said Stutzman in an interview. Christian Hochstetler faces interfaith questions about culture and the scope of God’s love.

He questions who he is after his unwilling return from his adopted Native American home after eight years away. Is he Amish? Is he Indian? What clothes should he wear? Who is his true family? Which faith does he claim?

The key theme of Christian’s Hope is the question of life’s purpose, Stutzman said. Christian is a young man of 20 who is considering marriage and faith and asking, “What is the purpose for my life? How do I make sense of what has happened to me?”

Stutzman based his trilogy on documented evidence about the Hochstetler family, adding details and dialogue to the known historical facts. In careful consultation with the available documents, Stutzman also considered the legacy of the story and contemporaneous history. “It could have happened this way, based on cultural assumptions of that time,” he said.

Christian’s Hope is available for $14.99 USD from MennoMedia at 800-245-7894 or www.MennoMedia.org, as well as at bookstores. Jacob’s Choice and Joseph’s Dilemma are available at the same price. Jacob’s Choice is also available in an expanded edition featuring maps, family charts, and other historical background for $29.99 USD. Study guides for all three books are available online at the MennoMedia store under “Study Guides.”

Author Interview—Christian’s Hope by Ervin Stutzman

Ervin Stutzman is the author of Christian’s Hope, just released by Herald Press. He also authored the first two books of the Return to Northkill trilogy, Jacob’s Choice and Joseph’s Dilemma, as well as other fiction and nonfiction. He was interviewed by Ardell Stauffer.

Did you start this project knowing it would be a trilogy?

Ervin Stutzman, right, enjoys conversation at an earlier book signing at Gospel Book Store in Berlin, Ohio.

I was planning one book. I had a fiction coach who, after several months, suggested a trilogy. As a result, these stories are much better as a series.

The focus of each book is different. First is the father, Jacob Hochstetler, and his experience of the tragic attack in Pennsylvania—the typical Amish story that is told. I expanded it by looking at what he does within his captivity and when he returns. So the first volume is the settler-centered point of view. Joseph’s Dilemma is set in the Indian village, and it helps us understand the Native American point of view. This third book takes another tack: What was it like to come back to an Amish home after living in an Indian village for eight years? This is the “third-culture kid” point of view that children of mission workers frequently experience as they grow into adulthood.

What first attracted you to this story as a possible novel or novels?

Having heard it as a young adult, seeing it in a genealogy book, hearing there had been skits or plays about it, intrigued me—it’s a family story. I’m related to the progenitor of the Hochstetler family, as are many Swiss-German Mennonites.

What is it about this story, this history, that keeps it known and in circulation among Mennonites and Amish after more than two hundred years?

Because Jacob Hochstetler is an icon for the Amish church. Like the martyr Dirk Willems for the Mennonites, his is a story of nonresistance. It’s a story we tell ourselves, a myth, in that sense: it helps define who we are in relation to our enemies. It’s not always true [of us], of course; that is why it is told.

How much actual history did you have to go on, and how much did you use the fiction writer’s license to expand beyond the facts?

The Jacob Hochstetler Family Association published a small book by Beth Hostetler Mark, Our Flesh and Blood, a documentary history with original documents in German and English. This is the best resource available.

That was a jumping-off point. I followed the basic rule: if documents existed, I make the book true to that. I study other documents for that period. I try to be true to history as we know it, the facts as they’ve come down. It could have happened this way, based on cultural assumptions of that time. A lot is my imagination. This is 900 pages of material based on maybe 50 pages of legacy and maybe 10 pages of documents written at the time.

“Choice,” “Dilemma,” “Hope”—your subtitles describe themes of questioning, choosing, possibilities. Is there a main theme that drives “Christian’s Hope”?

That theme is “hope” because this book is more future-looking. Book 1 makes the point that we as people make a choice to be nonresistant—how Jacob made that choice. Book 2 is about, who is Joseph going to be now that he has been adopted into an Indian tribe? The themes are war and forgiveness. Book 3 is more future-oriented: what Christian had hoped could happen. The titles get at decisions, the way people think and work, what life presents, and how we deal with it.

What’s different about looking back, and reimagining, this 18th-century story from the perspective of the 21st century? Are you just telling history, or are you speaking to modern issues too?

All the themes are universal. What’s the nature of community? How do we deal with people different from us? The books deal with Native Americans and settlers, the meaning of church membership, how clothing brings identity, and family conflict. Jacob is the protagonist in book 1, and the antagonist in book 3, with the theme of what a son and a father hope for. There is sexual abuse, stepfamilies, identity, and forgiveness. People are people in every generation and century. Back then it was the French and Indian War and the follow-up, where there was tremendous change and conflict and a clash of peoples.

You’re a pastor and church leader as well as writer. Does this story address particular Christian questions or themes?

For a pastor, the overarching theme is the sense of purpose. Christian has been with the Indians since age 11; he’s 20 now, looking at “What is the purpose for my life? How do I make sense of what happened to me, and make sense going forward?”

Together with the woman he will marry, he is asking, “What did God intend?” Why would God allow her parents to die, and her to grow up an orphan? Why would God allow Christian to be taken in a raid? These are universal questions, the deepest kind of pastoral questions.

What is God, what kind of God is there? The scope of God’s love—does he love Native Americans? Christian makes his church choice; it is key for him to meet Christian Frederick Post, who was a missionary. This makes it possible for him to convert to Christianity. Post was a man who loved the Indians, worked among them, and didn’t forsake them. This is a huge theme today, as Christians think about Muslims and have interfaith conversations. This was a huge topic in the first church of the New Testament as well. As the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Another modern theme shows up here: creation care is important today, which is one of Christian’s concerns. He was taught [as an Indian] to respect all life equally; the Amish he returns to don’t have that understanding at all.

Your book dedication thanks members of your writers group. Did they play a role in shaping this story with you?

Very much so. We’ve worked together several years. I brainstorm with them. They are influential as I read specific aspects of the story, a scene I’ve written. The women in my writers group always have lots to say about the way women are characterized in the story.

Has writing this trilogy whetted your appetite for further fiction writing?

Yes, I think so. I’m drawn to fiction more than ever. This is new for me; I had not imagined this ten years ago. Fiction lets people put themselves in someone else’s shoes for a few hours, and ask themselves, “What would I do if I were there?” I think that happens a little deeper with fiction than with essays, because people get emotionally invested in a story. It enables people to learn new points of view, to see their own life differently, perhaps at a deeper level.

Christian’s Hope and the other books in the Return to Northkill trilogy are available from MennoMedia at 800-245-7894, the MennoMedia webstore, Amazon, and other online sources.

FREE CHAPTER – PROLOGUE from Christian’s Hope.

“The thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when it finally comes.”

—Amish proverb
December 10, 1764

Several figures slipped quietly past the cabin window, casting momentary shadows from the setting sun onto Anna’s face. A few moments later, she was startled by a shout at the door. She paused in the middle of a mending stitch to glance nervously at her husband, Jacob, as he rose from his rocking chair. Who would be paying a visit at this time of evening in December?

Jacob lifted the clunky iron latch and swung open the oaken door to reveal a young Indian silhouetted in the doorway. Anna shrank back from the sight of a tomahawk and a knife in his belt, and a heavy necklace strung with large bear claws. A leather bag embroidered with beads hung at his side, and he wore brightly beaded moccasins. She shivered as two other Indians—a man and a woman—stepped to the side of the young man at the threshold. What had brought the dreaded Indians to their door? Had they come in peace?

Perhaps they were hungry. Should she offer them the pie she had baked the day before? She wasn’t about to deny whatever they’d demand.

All she could think about was the story. More than seven years ago, before she was married to Jacob, several Indians had scribed a charcoal X on Jacob’s cabin door. Jacob’s first wife, Lizzie, had shooed them off empty-handed rather than sharing the peach pie they’d requested. Later, Lizzie was stabbed to death when a French and Indian war party surprised the family in a predawn raid. They also killed two of Jacob and Lizzie’s children and kidnapped Jacob and his sons Joseph and Christian. Then they departed, leaving the Hochstetler house and barn in ashes.

By God’s grace or good fortune, Jacob had escaped after eight months in the Seneca village of Buckaloons. Anna married him four years later. His sons, however, remained captive with the Indians. Jacob’s persistent nighttime prayers and his written appeals to the British authorities were in vain. His longing for his lost sons had always hung like a cloud over their home.

A cold breeze from the open doorway now swept across Anna’s feet as Jacob surveyed the visitors from head to toe. Was he about to invite them in, she wondered, or would he step through the doorway to speak to them outside, as she hoped?

As Jacob stood there wordless, the youngest Indian uttered one simple and hesitant word.

“Dat?”

Anna took a quick breath. Why was this young Indian calling her husband Dat? She laid aside the trousers she was mending for Jacob and leaned forward to scan the young visitor’s expression, noticing his narrow nose and green eyes.

Jacob’s face wrinkled in disbelief. “Jo–Joseph?”

“Jah.” The young man nodded.

The young man watched Jacob’s face, as if looking for a sign. The silence stretched into discomfort as the young man waited.

Amish men did not show physical affection in public. But Anna could see disbelief and pent-up joy in Jacob’s inability to speak.

At last, Jacob extended his hand. “My son.” Jacob paused again, his voice breaking. “Come in.” A tear coursed down his cheek as Jacob gripped Joseph’s hand in his strong and callused right hand, and tenderly enfolded it with his left.

It was a gesture Jacob reserved for the most intimate of greetings; she had seen him use it only once before, when a visitor brought greetings from Jacob’s extended family in the Old Country. Father and son stood, clasping hands, their eyes wet with tears.

Joseph turned away from Jacob and reached out with affection to touch the woman with russet skin who stood at his left side. “Mein mutter,” he said. And then he nodded at the warrior who stood on his right. “Mein mütterlicher Onkel.”

Who would have expected Joseph to bring his adoptive Indian mother and uncle to their door? Anna and Jacob had heard rumors of captives being adopted by their captors, but hadn’t imagined it happening to Jacob’s sons. Did this mean they’d only come for a visit, or was Joseph intending to stay? She trembled as she rose from her chair to greet Joseph and his Indian family. He was no longer the athletic thirteen-year-old neighbor boy with the impish face as she’d known him years before.

As she reached out to shake Joseph’s hand, she noticed yet another visitor who stood behind them—a tall young man dressed in a British uniform and wearing a ponytail.

“I will assume this is your son, then?” the soldier asked.

“Jah,” Jacob said, his voice breaking a bit. “Thank you for bringing him home to us.”

“It is our responsibility, according to the treaty,” the soldier replied. “Now I’ll be on my way.”

“Won’t you stay for supper?” Jacob asked, with a questioning glance at Anna.

“No, thank you, sir,” the soldier said. “You’ll have your hands full with the company you have.”

Anna thought she saw the hint of a smile on the soldier’s face as he bowed, turned, and strode into the gathering darkness that hinted of snow.

Jacob motioned the remaining guests into the room. The man wore a ring in his nose and silver earrings that dangled from loops of skin on the bottom of his ears. The woman wore a red blanket around her shoulders, and her long black hair was tied back in a braid with a red cloth. They stepped in hesitantly and shook their heads when Jacob pulled back chairs from the table for them. Expressionless, Joseph sat cross-legged onto the floor, and his uncle followed suit. The woman hesitated for a moment before squatting on the other side of him.

These people must be famished, Anna thought. What could she add to the meager fare she’d prepared for supper? Perhaps she could fetch a couple of cabbages and red beets or turnips from the underground storage barrel in the garden, or onions from the attic. And where was she to bed down the guests for the night?

She had often prayed with Jacob for Joseph’s return. But this was so different than they’d envisioned it. Despair washed over her as the reality of the moment began to sink in. Somehow, Jacob and she had always imagined that his two sons would be released at the same time and come home together. Where was Christian? Had he not survived the captivity?

If only his companions had gone with the young soldier. She hoped Jacob would find a way to dismiss them without incident—the sooner the better. She was afraid of Indians, so she was terrified at the thought of having them stay. Being a stepmother to a son who’d lived among the Indians was frightening enough; it was even worse to think about offering hospitality to his adoptive family. How would they occupy themselves all day? What kind of food would she need to prepare? And what would Joseph think of her—his father’s new wife?

Even if his Indian friends left and Joseph remained alone with them in the house, how could she feel safe, not knowing what lay in the depths of his heart after his long exposure to the untamed habits of the Native people? She’d heard too many accounts of stealth killings in the colony, acts of violence that severed the fragile cord of trust between the whites and the Indians.

How could her stepson, this lanky young man who carried himself with the stony-faced demeanor of a Delaware warrior, ever earn her trust, let alone her love?